Russian motorcycle assault tactics have spread to the southern front of Russia’s 40-month wider war on Ukraine. The result in the south is the same as in the east. A lot of Russia’s southern bike troops are getting killed by Ukrainian mines, drones and artillery. 

But as in the east, the few southern bikers who survive can make dangerous dents in Ukrainian lines. The bike attacks are almost always fatal for the troops who attempt them, but that doesn’t mean they don’t work.

Ukrainian commanders should think twice before copying the method, however. The Russians can afford to lose troops. The Ukrainians can’t.

The Ukrainian armed forces’ southern task force claimed the Russians attacked “in the Malynivka area” on Friday. But analysts geolocated the site of the attack in Nesteryanka, 40 miles to the east in the same oblast.

In any event, the attack failed as around a dozen bike troops ran over mines, got plinked by drones or blasted by artillery. “Their plan was doomed to failure,” the Ukrainian southern task force stated. “Our soldiers met the motorcycle assaults with dense fire, and as a result, all the enemy equipment burned down! Not a single occupier passed!”

The Ukrainian defenders, possibly from the 65th Mechanized Brigade, were lucky. The thinking behind the Russian bike attacks is perverse, but not insane. “It involves heavy losses, but it still has certain results,” the Ukrainian Peaky Blinders drone unit explained.

“For example, 20 motorcycles are going, some of them are destroyed by artillery, some by drones, someone is eliminated by mining and our infantry will get someone in a gun battle. But several motorcycles still have a chance to jump into the landing.”

It only takes a few infiltrating Russian troops to create a lodgement inside Ukrainian lines—one that can grow into a larger breach. In deploying large numbers of bike troops, Russian commanders are playing the odds—and betting that a few will eventually ride unscathed past Ukrainian mines, drones and artillery. 

“Behind them is the same group, then more and more,” Peaky Blinders warned. The Friday bike attack in Zaporizhzhia may have failed, but the next one might not.

Abundant manpower

This costly assault method only works for the Kremlin because it has manpower in abundance. Motivated by generous enlistment bonuses and apparently believing Russia is winning the wider war, 30,000 fresh troops sign up for Russia’s war effort every month. That’s slightly more troops than Russia loses every month in Ukraine. Even the “suicidal bike attacks” haven’t tipped Russia’s manpower balance into a monthly deficit.

But Ukraine doesn’t have a durable manpower surplus. So it’s worth questioning the decision by one elite Ukrainian unit to form its own motorcycle assault group. The 425th Separate Assault Regiment organized its bike company, the first in the Ukrainian armed forces, last month. 

“During the training, the fighters spent hundreds of hours behind the wheel and practiced shooting in motion, firing thousands of rounds,” the regiment announced. “As a result, we have a modern cavalry whose main task is to rapidly break into enemy positions, carry out assault actions and quickly change the direction of strike.”

But can the regiment afford to lose almost all the bike troops it sends into battle? And will the Ukrainian people accept the loss of life? 

The Russians are determined to advance north in Zaporizhzhia Oblast. “Russian troops conduct six to seven attacks daily in the direction of Malynivka,” the Ukrainian Center for Defense Strategies noted. One of these attacks may eventually succeed—and open a gap in Ukrainian lines that Russian reinforcements can exploit. 

Even if the effort succeeds, it will come at the cost of most of the bike troops carrying out the initial assaults. “The majority of these bikers are suicidal,” Peaky Blinders observed. “But apparently they are completely satisfied with it.”

Ukrainians might not be so satisfied dying like that.

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Russia’s ghost riders are storming Sumy—and they’re not meant to come back

Today, there are interesting updates from the Kupiansk direction. Here, as Russian losses have officially hit an unprecedented 1 million count, the breaking point finally came, and the soldiers began turning their rifles on their own commanders rather than face certain death in futile assaults.

Three bullets on road to Nyzhnia Duvanka

In one of the most brutal recent examples of growing disorder within Russian ranks, several Russian soldiers near the settlement of Nyzhnia Duvanka in the Luhansk region turned on their own.

By shooting and killing the military police platoon commander and two of his barrier troop subordinates and running away, they sparked a frantic search operation by Russian authorities.

The deserters left their comrades to lie dead on the road while fleeing to save their lives from both Ukrainian and Russian fire.

Pischane funnel: Where men disappear

This violent mutiny did not emerge in a vacuum; it is directly tied to the hopeless bloodbath unfolding near the Kupiansk front, specifically at the Pischane funnel. For months, Russian forces have tried and failed to break through Ukrainian defenses here.

The Ukrainians have created a deadly trap by controlling the flanks, exposing any Russian assault to relentless drone and artillery fire from both sides. Yet commanders continue to send wave after wave of infantry into the funnel, hoping to drive a wedge through Ukrainian lines.

Every new wave knows exactly how it will end, as almost no one from previous groups returns alive. The systematic nature of these assaults has been likened to mass execution, with soldiers pushed forward not for tactical gain but to serve as human battering rams.

Mad Max cars and vanishing men

To make matters worse, Russian troops are being sent into combat in improvised Mad Max-style vehicles, like the Gaz-69, which entered production in 1952, the year of Stalin’s death, and regular cars fitted with rudimentary armor or even none.

Such improvised motorcycle squads and barely armored vehicles now lead the charge, only to be annihilated by Ukrainian FPV drones well before reaching the contact line. These desperate measures highlight not only material shortages but a total disregard for the lives of Russian troops.

Ukrainian surveillance drones ensure that almost no movement goes undetected, meaning most assaults are decimated long before they engage the defenders.

When running is not option

Despite the carnage, desertions in the Russian army remain surprisingly rare. The reason lies in the sheer brutality of the punishments for refusing to fight.

Soldiers who resist are subjected to medieval-style torture. Some are thrown into pits without food before being forced to fight each other to the death to earn the right to live another day.

In one documented case, soldiers were tied behind vehicles and dragged through the dirt, while other deserters were forced to bury each other alive as punishment and to serve as an example. In the Lyman area, a surrendering Russian soldier was spotted by Russian drone operators and targeted by his own artillery.

This highlights the impossible choice facing many: surrender and be killed or desert and be hunted. For some, turning against their officers seems to be the only escape.

This toxic atmosphere has bred a surge in violent retaliation. Russian soldiers, driven to the brink by the realization that dying in a pointless assault is their fate if they continue, are increasingly likely to choose to kill their commanders instead, as it is safer than being spotted attempting to surrender to the Ukrainians.

Meanwhile, commanders themselves contribute to the decay by labeling active soldiers as deserters to avoid paying their wages, denying them medical care, and forcing under-equipped men into combat.

A recent appeal by the families of men from the Russian 54th Motorized Rifle Regiment revealed horrifying conditions: soldiers were beaten and handcuffed, robbed of personal belongings, and left to die without evacuation.

Wounded men are forced to crawl back to safety, and the dead are simply abandoned, confirmed by footage showing bodies of dead Russian soldiers that haven’t been moved for months since the snow covered the fields.

Million-man grave and rot within

The downward spiral is accelerating. Russian military losses have just surpassed one million casualties, including killed, wounded, and captured.

Equipment losses are equally staggering, with 10,000 destroyed and damaged tanks and over 20,000 armored vehicles of various types.

Lacking armor, modern vehicles, or meaningful support, commanders now rely on sheer manpower and suicidal frontal attacks to advance the line ever so slowly. But the more men are lost, the worse morale gets, and the more inclined troops are coming to view their superiors as the enemy instead of the Ukrainians they are forced to fight.

Overall, such events create a vicious cycle.

The collapse of discipline and the dehumanizing tactics employed by Russian commanders will inevitably lead to more incidents where soldiers turn their weapons on their leaders.

To prevent this, the officers are only doubling down on cruelty, inventing new, more barbaric punishments. This internal rot may not only undermine Russia’s ability to continue the war, but it could also ultimately sabotage its war effort from within.

In our regular frontline report, we pair up with the military blogger Reporting from Ukraine to keep you informed about what is happening on the battlefield in the Russo-Ukrainian war.

“They will kill us and our children without hesitation,” says Ukraine’s former chief mufti, watching Russian soldiers crawling over their dead.

The man who once led interfaith prayers for peace in Donetsk’s central square — now under Russian grip for over a decade — serves as a combat medic, wondering what transforms a human being into something that devours everything in its path: your home, your bed, your children’s future, simply because their government said they could.

In the ruins of Vovchansk, once a bustling city now reduced to rubble, Said Ismagilov asks what drives men to die for nothing — only to find his answer in an ancient prophecy about gold and the ninety-nine percent who die reaching for it.

“They will eat from your plate and wear your shirt without a second thought”

They run and crawl in hordes — like locusts. Their raison d’être is to move forward at any cost and seize our homes and new territory.

Every day in Vovchansk, they attack in small groups of three to five. They trample and climb over the corpses of their comrades who stormed the same position just hours earlier. There is no logic, no meaning, no success — only the relentless throwing of bodies at us.

The difference from Marshal Zhukov’s meat-grinder assaults is that now they come in small waves, and the goal is not kilometers but a single position, mere square meters.

My philosophical education stops me from viewing this daily carnage through the eyes of a mathematician, simply recording: minus one, minus five, minus forty. My background in philosophy and theology compels me to try to understand why this conditional Homo erectus and I say “upright man” because I cannot, in good conscience, call them Homo sapiens, as I see no rationality in their actions — why he climbs over the corpses of his swarm mates toward certain death, across the ruins of a city that now resembles a Martian landscape.

What for? What is your motivation? What do you hope to gain?

Did you come to kill our children so you could raise your own? He is silent. He lowers his eyes. But that’s the truth.

They will eat from your plate and wear your shirt without a second thought, because their king and their church have blessed them to do so.

The Prophet Muhammad once gave a striking description of human stupidity and greed:
“The Hour will not come to pass before the River Euphrates dries up to reveal a mountain of gold, for which people will fight. Ninety-nine out of one hundred will die, and every man among them will say, ‘Perhaps I will be the one who survives.’”

I look at them and wonder — maybe each one advancing, charging at us, believes he will survive, he will get rich.

But then our guys get to work.

And the statistician in me says:

Minus five more.

The mufti who lost everything — twice

Said Ismagilov, former mufti of Ukraine’s Umma (Muslim community) has twice lost his home to Russia’s invasions. A Volga Tatar, Ismagilov’s ancestors fled Soviet collectivization in central Russia.

He studied in Donetsk and Moscow before becoming an imam and helping build Islamic religious life in the Donbas, which by 2014 had Ukraine’s largest Muslim population outside Crimea — including Crimean Tatars illegally deported from their homelans during the Second World War, ethnic Tatars from Russia like hiw own family, and Meskhetian Turks  — a Muslim group forcibly relocated during the Soviet times.

On 12 April 2014, a group of Russian saboteurs led by Igor Girkin (Strelkov) entered Sloviansk in Donetsk Oblast.  Protests against the disguised Russian takeover erupted across the Donbas. That same year, Ismagilov helped lead a five-month Interreligious Prayer Marathon, where believers of different faiths gathered daily in central Donetsk to pray for peace in Ukraine.

However, the peaceful interfaith action was seen as a threat by the occupation forces. In September 2014, the marathon was forcibly disbanded and the prayer site destroyed; sixteen participants were detained and tortured. Warned of danger, Ismagilov fled Donetsk with his family.

From interfaith prayers to frontline service

He resettled in Bucha, outside Kyiv. When Russia invaded again in February 2022, Bucha was quickly occupied. Ismagilov evacuated his family and volunteered as a paramedic after being rejected for military service due to inexperience. He helped evacuate the wounded from Bucha and later from the eastern front lines.

“Our main weapons were our hands… to save the wounded,” he said in an interview.

In October 2023, he was formally drafted, serving in Kyiv’s air defense forces, then with the 57th Brigade’s drone unit near Kharkiv, and later along the Donetsk line. Though he stepped down as mufti in late 2022, Ismagilov continued to lead prayers when possible, including in front-line mosques and even amid the ruins of Bakhmut.

Some Muslim observances are impossible during active duty, but Ismagilov emphasizes the integration of Muslims in Ukrainian society:

“We fight together, build together, and defend together, and this is because there’s a normal attitude toward Muslims in Ukraine. They’re not seen as aliens or enemies or immigrants, but as an integral part of the Ukrainian nation.”

Russians are advancing — after a breakthrough in the region, Sumy may come under direct fire.
On the border of Sumy Oblast, Russian occupiers have intensified their offensive and advanced 6–7 kilometers deep into Ukrainian territory.

Russia does not intend to stop at creating a so-called “buffer zone,” adds Shevtsov. Its goal is the full occupation of Sumy Oblast, as well as Kharkiv Oblast and other regions in eastern Ukraine.

According to Andrii Demchenko, spokesperson for the State Border Guard Service (SBGS), about 50,000 Russian troops have been concentrated in Kursk Oblast near the Russian border, UNIAN reports. 

The offensive is accompanied by intense shelling from drones, artillery, and aircraft using glide bombs and guided missiles.

All of this aims to complicate the defense of Ukrainian positions and push even deeper.

“The situation is not easy — in fact, it’s difficult. The Russians are sending infantry groups toward Yunakivka and Khotin. If earlier we observed activity in the areas of Basivka and Zhuravka, now the zone has expanded,” Demchenko says.

So far, heavy armored vehicles have not been used. Instead, Russia is deploying infantry, including units on quad bikes and motorcycles, to quickly break into Ukrainian territory.

The invaders are trying to entrench themselves in forest belts and hideouts while awaiting reinforcements.

“We must pay tribute to our soldiers, who are bravely holding the defense and destroying dozens of invaders every day… But unfortunately, the enemy does not care about its losses — some die, others keep coming,” the military spokesperson emphasizes. 

According to Demchenko, the occupiers’ goal is to gradually expand the combat zone and move closer to strategically important logistical hubs to increase pressure on Ukraine’s defense forces.

With Rusia-Ukraine ceasefire negotiations resumed un US President Donald Trump’s pressure for the first time since 2022, Russian forces have launched a new offensive in northern Ukraine, targeting border villages in Sumy Oblast and pushing to create a buffer zone, according to multiple Ukrainian sources.

Border assaults on Sumy’s Oleksiivka, Yunakivka, and Yablunivka

Ukraine’s General Staff confirmed that the Russians have intensified assaults near the Sumy Oblast border, specifically in the direction of Oleksiivka, Yunakivka, and Yablunivka. The attackers are attempting to breach Ukrainian defenses and solidify a presence along the frontier.

A Ukrainian war monitoring group, DeepState, reported that Russian troops have captured six settlements in the area, including the village of Vodolahy, which is located approximately 25–30 kilometers from the regional capital, Sumy city. These attacks are supported by drone strikes and artillery shelling of civilian areas, according to local authorities.

According to the General Staff, there have been 34 combat clashes on the Kursk direction – the junction point of Ukraine’s Sumy Oblast and Russia. Russian forces reportedly conducted 14 airstrikes, dropped 24 guided bombs, and carried out 245 shelling attacks, including nine using multiple rocket launchers.

DeepState: Russia targets key logistical villages

DeepState said Russian troops are advancing toward Khotin and Yunakivka.

“Yunakivka has many buildings that offer cover, making it ideal for Russian forces to hide, gather, and entrench,” the monitoring group noted.

They warned that if Russia secures Yunakivka and the surrounding heights, it could open the way for FPV drone attacks on the city of Sumy — the same thing Russia already does in Kherson to terrorize civilians in what’s come to be known as the “human safari.”

In a separate broadcast on Suspilne Studio, DeepState co-founder Ruslan Mikula stated that Russian forces are attempting daily incursions into northern Yunakivka.

“It is an important location logistically, capable of hosting a large number of personnel. The enemy prioritizes taking Yunakivka and is also pressing toward Yablunivka,” he said.

Evacuation from border zone begins

On 31 May 2025, Sumy Oblast Military Administration head Oleg Hryhorov issued a video message, confirming the start of a mandatory evacuation from 11 border villages. A total of 111 people have evacuated so far, with over 2,800 residents in the affected area, including 367 children.

50,000 Russian troops near Sumy, Zelenskyy says

Militarnyi notes that Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has previously stated that approximately 50,000 Russian troops are concentrated near Sumy, forming the core of the new offensive. Ukrainian military reports indicate that Russia is using assault groups from airborne troops and special operations forces to penetrate defenses and move from the Kursk area into Sumy Oblast.

Active combat in gray zones and new push in multiple directions

Russian infantry is currently assaulting near Bilovody and Loknia, where they are making progress. DeepState notes that Vodolahy, Volodymyrivka, and Kostiantynivka are now in the “gray zone” due to ongoing fighting and lack of confirmed control.

DeepState’s Mikula further stated on Suspilne that “the enemy is conducting offensive actions from Kostiantynivka to Oleshna,” and noted Russian attempts to break through toward Myropillia on 25–27 May. Losses were reported on the Russian side, but their troops are trying to entrench along the administrative border between Ukraine and Russia.

Kremlin’s broader summer campaign

Russia appears to have accelerated its military actions on the battlefield, launching the fastest-paced offensive of 2025, The New York Times believes. The Kremlin is pushing into remaining Ukrainian-controlled parts of Donetsk Oblast in an apparent bid to complete its conquest of the Donbas region, including Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts.

Military analysts cited by NYT say Russian forces improved their tactics, drone capabilities, and logistics during the winter pause. This month, they breached Ukrainian lines between Pokrovsk and Toretsk, advancing toward remaining supply hubs under Ukrainian control, according to the report.

Simultaneously, smaller gains have been noted in Sumy Oblast, where Russian troops are reportedly leveraging momentum after repelling Ukrainian incursions into the Kursk region last year.